New Alien Species, How In Depth Do You Get?

[Hellcat]

Ok, so just about all of us, if not all, have made new alienspecies from time to time. When you think of it it's not too hard, just come up with some basic attribute stats, the average size range, move stats, any special skills, any special abilities, and and story factors and your done. Often deciding what these should be is the hardest part.

But what I'm asking about here is the kibble that gives flavor to the species. The thing that really explains a little about who that species is. Like if you look in some of the sourcebooks there might be a summary of two or three paragraphs which give the basics of the species while others might have several paragraphs that go into a little bit of various asspects of who that species is. Then Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races and Galxy Guide 12: Aliens - Enemies and Allies go even more in depth by breaking things into categories which even further detail particular elements of the species.

So how in depth do you like to go with your species? Do you just keep it to the basics, the stats? Or do you like to give a brief summary. Maybe you like to hit a little on various elements so folks better understand your species. Then again you could be one who likes to be really detailed, breaking theings down into categories and covering the elements within that category as much as possible. Or maybe a combiniation of two or more of these.

In my case usually I'm the second and thrid, brief summary most of the time but sometimes a few more paragraphs that hit several elements without going too deeply into each. On occassion I start thinking about being heavily detailed, but almost never am. However, one of my species, which I'd initially created for something else and have now featured heavily in my PtP, I've found myself really getting detailed with. I mean I've been writing up about their biology, their culture, religion, naming practices, aging, language, forms of martial arts, and even have a language glossary of their modern so as to use it in game. It's really becomeing a bible for that species, causing me to even look at it all to try and keep at least some consistancy.
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Wanted Poster

[Esoomian]

In a Star Wars setting I've only ever really had to do it once and it ended up being about three or so pages of history culture and biology. It could have been expanded on but the need has never really come up so it stayed at that.

In a non-Star Wars setting I've been doing some work on one particular species which has quite a lot of existing material, however a lot of it is inconsistant or retconned so I've been slowly gathering together as much of the material as I can and then working out what parts make sense and slowly putting it all together in a complete dossier filling in any blanks or correcting any inconsistances (or just plain bad ideas) with my own material.

I'm not so sure I've ever actually made a species from scratch... well not unless you count the game Spore :p
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

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[ZzaphodD]

I have no need for new aliens except when they are inspired from an already existing source, and I want to port them into SW. In those cases I, and probly the players, have knowledge of the basic concepts. The only thing I have to put down is their place in the SW universe. So far I have only done this with a few 40K species.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[garhkal]

I usually come up with a little backstory/history, then some phys characteristics to id them as well as some RP notes..
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